October 03, 2009

Iain and I were tipping a few at the Baseball Tavern (above) when my Dad called. He'd been talking with the Herald's Sean McAdam (an alumnus of the high school my dad and I both went to - my dad works at the park now part-time), who tipped him that the Sox were letting fans on the field and possibly letting them meet players as part of the Fan Appreciation Series.

I haven't shotgunned a malt beverage like that since college. Iain and I quickly settled our tab, ran to buy baseballs and Sharpies (which didn't wind up getting used) and get in line to be let in to the park.

Sure enough, at 5:10 pm, the gates opened. We entered, walked a ways, then took a left at Canvas Alley, walking past the groundskeepers' brooms, past the field box seats...and out the open door onto the warning track.

August 30, 2009

August 26, 2009

Bottom of the third inning. David Ortiz stood in the on-deck circle, preparing to face Jose Contreras with the bases loaded.

My immediate instinct was to cringe. Everyone knows what his numbers say this year, I thought. Everyone knows about the PED report and all the doubts and clouds that linger over Papi. This isn't like it would have been in 2005.

Except, I would learn, for one thing.

The wave of energy that rushed through the crowd as the PA announcer began to call Ortiz's name was physically palpable. People leapt to their feet, and a roar burst out as if released from a can.

By rights, Ortiz should've been out on the little squibber that rolled toward first base, ending the inning. It really should have been more cause for navel-gazing about the erstwhile slugger.

Instead, Contreras booted the ball and Ortiz was safe.

Given the circumstances, the opportunities for nay-saying were so ripe they were falling off the vine. Yet the crowd cheered as if he'd just smacked a liner through the shift and cleared the bases.

I'd been away from the ballpark too long.

Later on in the game, when the White Sox narrowed the lead to two runs, the possibility that the 6-run third had all been for naught became a real one.

But the ballpark was balmy, the pace of the game slow and even. Sam and I were snapping pictures, trading (perhaps tasteless) jokes about stolen laptops when Clay Buchholz began to give up runs.

By then, I'd decided, it didn't even matter if they won. I'd gotten what I came for.

***

First came the wait through April for Papi to hit a home run. Just one home run.

After that came the wait for the second.

In the ensuing months, he had his moments, then slumped again. The park still seems to have a spell over it when he comes to the plate, but it seems more out of respect, most times, than anything.

In the months since those first and second homers, there's been another wait; the wait for Papi to hit one walkoff homer at Fenway. Just one.

Tonight, when it finally happened, it was a ringing, no-doubt blast out to the right-field grandstand, a homer that had Don Orsillo shouting out the call as Papi trotted the bases. It was a beautiful and satisfying thing.

I can only imagine what it must've sounded like at the park, having been among crowds that stood rooting and clapping and chanting for Ortiz in other big moments this season, as that homer finally carried out of there, the way it already had in so many of our minds.

July 07, 2009

Nobody really cares at this point about the minutiae of Friday night's game, but some of the events of that night highlighted an ongoing issue that I think needs to be addressed -- namely, the fact that some of you in the front rows seem to be suffering from a strange and increasingly pernicious foul ball fetish.

What is the big deal about foul balls? I understand getting distracted when a screamer comes into your section, or a soaring popup is whistling through the air overhead, seemingly destined for your cranium. I can even get a little healthy competition when a ball is up for grabs, if only to show off your prowess to members of the opposite sex who may be interested.

But lately, it seems like every game I go to, one of you dudes down front insists on making a bigger, scarier deal about a foul ball than I even thought possible.

Personally, I believe that even if you happen to catch a ball "fair and square", if you are a male of drinking age and there are kids nearby, you should give it to them. Trust me when I say this will impress members of the opposite sex more, no matter how deft and athletic you try to be about elbowing old ladies and eight-year-olds out of the way in the process of making a catch. More often than not, though, you dudes seem to be choosing the souvenir over civility.

Be that as it may, discourtesies toward one's fellow fans are one thing. Interfering with the game is another.

Case in point: the dude down front last Friday night who reached out and snatched a foul ball away from the glove of Kevin Youkilis during the fourth inning, a ball that should've been an out. An out that might have staved off what would turn into a four-run Mariners rally.

I was proud to be among the rest of the fans on the third-base side, who chanted "ALL YOUR FAULT!" repeatedly in his direction as each run scored.

Because, dude. Not cool. At all.

One more thing on the foul ball front. If you must alter the course of the game in your mad pursuit of a dollar's worth of cowhide and cork, please at least try to alter it in your team's favor.

Case in point: the dude on the first base side who failed to snatch a foul popup out of the glove of Russell Branyan in the bottom of the eleventh on Friday night, a foul ball that might've kept the rally alive when instead it fell just one run short. That dude deserved every second of the "ALL YOUR FAULT" he got from the grandstands, too.

Otherwise, dudes of the ballpark, believe me when I say I wish you, your zeal for the game, and your beer-fueled heckling of opposing players Godspeed. But let's ease off on the foul ball mania just a little bit, for everyone's sake.

June 21, 2009

Every time I'm at the ballpark when Josh Beckett is pitching, I hear the same thing. "It's like it happens too fast." Blink and you'll miss it, the ball from Beckett's hand to the plate.

Actually, scratch that - watch intently, and you still may miss it. At least once a game, I hear this complaint from over my shoulder. "It's too fast."

To watch Josh Beckett pitch in person is for your eyes to receive information your brain rejects as preposterous - the image of a human being conveying a ball over 60 feet to his catcher's mitt in the same time it would take most mortals to simply place it into the glove.

Except in photos, where it sometimes appears as a white blur, the ball is virtually invisible. You can tell when it's a curveball because the batter swings from his heels and misses, instead of standing there slackjawed, like he does with the two-seamer. When you think you've finally spotted the fastball, you realize, that was a change-up. Which is the only reason, sitting there with no instant replay and no slow-motion, you saw it at all.

"Too fast" also went for the whole game, which for the first four innings was as taut a pitchers' duel as you could ask for, the most brilliantly pitched game I've seen since Schilling vs. Glavine almost exactly three years ago. The batters on both sides stood in and were returned to the bench like clockwork.

It was the eighth inning before I looked up at Josh's pitch count, and was astonished to find he had only 83. Before I could say "he could go nine," Sweet Caroline was playing.

Derek Lowe, in his first return to Fenway Park in a visitors' uniform, was cheered when he first took the field for warm-ups, and when he first took the mound for Atlanta, and was given a standing ovation as he left the field. He was only slightly less perfect, surrendering three over six, a quality
start, but not enough to win with the monster on the mound for the Sox.

The Boston lineup began to chip away at Derek the second time through, manufacturing a tidy run at a time, while Beckett began to pull away on this second lap, liberally mixing a devastating mid-70's curveball in with a fastball that grew more powerful the longer the game went on.

Derek had been respectable, but the batters on his side of the scoreboard were brutally silenced. Quiet, businesslike and quick.

Not a lot of show from Josh, in his first regular-season complete-game shutout while wearing a Boston uniform. At times he bared his teeth as he reached back for an out pitch, but otherwise his only gesture was to ask for a new baseball. He had about him the atmosphere of predatory calm we saw from him in the playoffs two years ago, that nothing-personal deadpan glare in at the plate, like a hitman with a bounty in his sights.

April 25, 2009

It felt last night like I was seeing Fenway through new eyes. Little has changed about the park itself, but this was my first game with my new camera, a Christmas present, in tow.

My previous camera was an Olympus advanced compact I bought in 2002. It was my first digital camera and first with any optical zoom to think of. It was top of the line in 2002, and lasted me a long time. But by 2008, it had gotten very old in more ways than one. Today's digicams can take up to 20 megapixel photos at the professional level; "prosumer" models usually run about 10 to 12. The Olympus took...drum roll...one megapixel shots. It had even gotten to the point where I had offers to buy photos for publication, which were rescinded when I revealed the shamefully low resolution.

That wasn't the only problem. By the end (and to be honest, by about week 2 of owning this camera), if you weren't me, you essentially couldn't operate it. It had nothing in the way of image stabilization, and in fact seemed to add blurriness to all but the rarest of shots. That meant this was a camera I couldn't just hand to someone and ask to take my picture in front of a landmark.

Over time, two problems got worse and worse: battery life and response time. It could take up to 10 minutes to format a memory card, could go through nine--count 'em, nine--double A batteries in the course of one baseball or football game, and times it responded when I asked it to during, say, a dramatic moment at a sporting event, were the exception rather than the rule.

So it wasn't just a new toy - it was a totally new experience. From 10x optical zoom to a six-inch, 300 millimeter telephoto lens, so powerful that it was actually too close to get the John Hancock tower and 111 Huntington Ave in the same frame from the third-base-side grandstand if I framed a shot in portrait. It was like a camera and binoculars in one - I got an up-close view of this thrilling game, and at my leisure, could lightly press a button and take three shots per second of whatever I saw.

***I've been to a playoff-clinching game at Fenway. I've been to Yankees games, in April and July. I've been to comeback, walkoff wins. Maybe it was the camera, but this was one of my more intense Sox game experiences ever.

It started looking like the Sox were going to regress to the limp offense they'd exhibited on the West Coast swing earlier this month. I lost track of how many runners they stranded on base; it seemed to happen every inning.

I've been at Fenway Park when, for no discernible or rational reason, a comeback was palpable in the air before it ever happened. I've been at Fenway Park when that comeback seemed to have consciously been created from the hive-mind of the fans in attendance, times it seems the place decides collectively, you know what, actually, we're not leaving here without a win. This was not one of those times. In fact, by the time there were two outs in the bottom of the ninth, I was busier scrolling through the hundreds and hundreds of shots I'd taken on the new camera's viewing screen than watching the game.

Once again, a man stood in scoring position, and once again, the Red Sox seemed entirely prepared to strand him there. Kevin Youkilis had singled after David Ortiz struck out to open the inning; JD Drew had advanced him with a groundout. The Yankees led, 4-2. Jon Lester had been mostly solid, but struggled with walks, and Joba Chamberlain had been even better. Now Mariano Rivera was slowly squeezing the life out of the Sox; he'd come on in relief of Damaso Marte with one strike on Nick Green the previous inning and shut down a budding rally on a questionable called strike three to Dustin Pedroia.

It had not been Boston's night. Calls had been iffy, the offense had suffered from a power outage, and on top of it, their luck had sometimes been rotten. By no means was I expecting or even looking for a comeback.

An explosion of sound jolted me to look up, and when I did, there went the ball off the bat of Jason Bay, rocketing toward the Monster. "No way!" I cried into the thundering din around me. "No way!"

It was just barely over the edge of the Monster, just barely inside the yellow line. A two-run homer to blow the save for Rivera and tie the game.

Normally, there's an audible syllable to the Fenway crowd's yell, a "YAHHH" or "Awww...." this time, it was just a wordless, deafening blast of noise.

Maybe it was the seats I had - in the front row of the grandstand
almost directly behind the plate, as opposed to the left-field family
section, where I saw the playoff game against the Angels last year. But
it was an uncharted level of volume for me.

I thought it had peaked with Bay's homer, but when Kevin Youkilis hit an absolute, Manny-vs.-K-Rod-in-the-2007-ALCS-style bomba gigante over the Green Monster and onto Lansdowne St, it intensified to a level that was bordering on painful.

I didn't even see most of Youkilis's post-homer trot. It was obscured behind hundreds of waving hands raised in the air. I jockeyed for position, and raised my camera again, just in time to see Youkilis diving into the welcoming arms of his teammates at home.

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